Ms Thing

A Wind Named Amnesia: Anime Review

Today I was fairly pissed because I tried to watch Ninja Scroll multiple times and ran into issues each time. Instead I was rerouted to the anime movie A Wind Named Amnesia, which was directed by Kazuo Yamazaki and released in 1990. This turned out to be the best choice. It originated from a book of the same name by Hideyaki Kikuchi in 1983. This is a short movie, barely over 80 minutes. But it is so jampacked with philosophy, occultic and supernatural subtext that it easily could have been stretched to three hours. I also found it poignant that it popped up to me right after Easter, a holiday so heavily linked with themes of fertility and new beginnings. But it didnt make me think of my own; rather humanity’s and the question of just how many we have actually had. Lets get into it!

We meet our protagonist and narrator Wataru on the run from robotic machine killers. During his escape in his jeep he meets and picks up a white haired woman named Sophia. She is on her way to New York, and on his quest to travel around the earth he decided to take her there. They live in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, and on their journey he explains to her that its all due to some strange winds that flew over the earth one day. The winds wiped everyone’s memory clean, and because they had amnesia they forgot what it meant to live civilly or even to be human. They had become savages, only looking after any primal needs their bodies led them to. During Wataru and Sophia’s travels they meet people in different destroyed towns and give them the chance to come away with them and re-learn what it means to be a person and live well. Each time Wataru is eventually rejected. Finally once they reach New York, Sophia reveals to him that she is from a more advanced planet and they are actually responsible for the Amnesia winds. He forgives her, she returns to her planet, and he continues on to re-teach the people.

The first group of people Wataru had come across were very violent and animal like. They were similar to the first few generations of humans that recognized and worshipped a higher power. The people Wataru saved were a woman who was about to be sacrificed to the people’s God for blessings. The other person they saved was a man who acted as the womans protector. The pair ended up going right back, because the woman didnt want someone to be sacrificed in her place. Wataru goes back to save her again and ends up killing the people’s God. Who crazily enough turns out to be a human like them and a goofball in a forklift with tinted windows. The problem was, after Wataru got rid of this false deity, the people still didnt look to themselves for blessings. Instead, they made the girls companion, her protector, their new god. Without words, it was as if whoever had the most potential for power to conquer or kill was granted Godhood.

The second pair of people Wataru and Sophia came across lived in a clean, advanced city completely run by computers- but it was only them. They had managed to keep the simulation going for a long time but now that Wataru and Sophia were there, invited them to stay on in the city and coexist with them and the computers. Wataru suggested they break out of the false reality and come with he and Sophia instead. The woman agreed at first, but then like the first set of people she went back to her city. The simulation was more comfortable than the unknown situation that Wataru and Sophia were headed into. Wataru was frustrated with both scenarios but Sophia reminded him that his task was to simply teach them, not force it on them. Therein lies the task of an awakened person.

Sophia herself was not symbolic of anything so much as she was the literal embodiment of something not of this plane. She pretty much hinted at the fact that she knew who was responsible for the winds when she told Wataru, “You cant assume that beings more powerful than men are necessarily wiser”. At the end of the movie she still wasnt sure that what her people had done to the humans was the right thing, though their intentions were pure. This brings me to this: in every story of humanity, the higher powers decide to wipe most of us all out to see if when we start over, we will do the right thing the next time. (Remember the anime Angel’s Egg??) And each time we disappoint them by doing the same things we did before, to each other. However, these beings still vehemently and positively believe we will get it right, which is why each time people become conscious (they Remember) they go out on a journey to reach others and give them the option.

🔮 Witchy Shop 🔮

Cupboards full of bread.

All of the foods we could eat,